The Iron Yuppie

I'm telling you, this is one of the first times that new technology has so profoundly changed daily life for me so quickly in a long time. Both of them come thanks to MSN.

The first revolves around the upcoming PDC. I was trying to figure out what hotel to stay at when I went to the LA convention center. I went to Virtual Earth, and typed in Los Angeles Convention center. A link comes up. Then I type Hotel. Within 20 seconds I can see every hotel in the area and immediately judge which ones I want to go see. The best part is that attached to each of the links is the address and phone number! This simply could not be easier (unless, i suppose, they had pre-defined links listed for indicating what other people had followed up their search with...). Check it out!

The second comes from the new search functionality on MSN Mobile. Maybe not my MOST hated thing about cell phones (but certainly up there) is the $1.00 that 411 on a cell phone costs. I have the Internet, this is absurd! With MSN Mobile, from my phone, I go to http://mobile.msn.com/search/default.aspx (already set as a favorite). I type a word, and my address, and it looks up all the items in the area, displaying the address, phone number and distance. Awesome! But even better, it SAVES my address, so I never need to type that again. Oh, now that is great. No more 411 for me... EVER.

This is also the first time I think I can unequivocally say that MSN beat Google. Yes, I'm aware of Google maps and Mobile.Google.com, but they lose in a head-to-head for the following reasons. Google maps doesn't (to my knowledge) let you overlay one search on top of the next search, and though the scrolling is nice, it doesn't have anywhere near the mouse integration (on the scroll wheel for example) that Virtual Earth does. Second, Mobile.Google is fine, but it doesn't save your location on your phone, which I view as CRITICAL considering I want to type in as little as possible. The only other thing that catches my eye is that it's kind of a weird URL... mobile.google.com/local instead of mobile.msn.com/search ... this is admittedly a minor point, since I'll probably set a favorite anyway. Both of you should remember who I am and my last 5 searches too... again, help me type less!